Protecting Your Valuable Art Collection Part 1

     If you are an art collector you have undoubtedly spent hours and hours looking at the art you love.  In some cases you have probably spent thousands of dollars on a single piece.   How much is your collection worth?  What is the best way to protect your investment?  Clearly having a concise and visual inventory of your collection for insurance purposes is number one.    Notice I said "protect your investment "because in the event of a catastrophic incident like a fire or theft, you may in fact lose those pieces you love.  Replacing that art is generally impossible to do due to the individual nature of art, but getting back the investment dollars you have spent is going to be contingent on whether you had your collection insured and inventoried properly.

     Anyone who has dealt with an insurance company probably knows first hand that they are in the business of collecting premiums first, sending out checks to cover the items, last.  The best way to "insure" that you will get your money back to purchase pieces that you have lost is to be sure that you have a concise and succinct inventory to present to the insurance company.  This removes all doubt about what you actually had, how much you paid fro it, what its current value is and specifically, what you actually lost in terms of actual dollars.  It is important to determine how much it will cost you to replace these pieces.  Guess work and vague estimates, to an insurance company, are useless.

     Using a piece of software like My Art Collection will insure that you have this kind of documentation to present to your insurance company in the case of a loss.  There are many aspects of this kind of inventory that are unique to art work  and I will go into more detail about these in a later post.

Protect your Art Collection!